Sports fans not immersed in the ways of Test cricket would be intrigued at how a contest can end without a clear winner and loser, and how there can be celebration of a stalemate. In Test cricket, too, the draw has become pretty rare of late, and often happens only when a considerable amount of time is lost due to weather. That’s why India’s feat of batting 143 overs in Manchester was all the more special. It is a rare performance in this era of T20 cricket, where strike rates are everything and most batsmen have forgotten the art of defending.
A hard-fought draw, which witnesses two teams fighting it out for the full five days before finishing with shared honours, is still one of the sublime joys of the longest format of the game, as could be seen at Old Trafford over five days. Shubman Gill, K L Rahul, Washington Sundar and Ravindra Jadeja batted with skill, patience and composure to deny England a win. If India manages to level the series 2-2 at the Oval next week, the doggedness shown in the fourth Test will be a big reason. Test cricket is the severest examination of the mental, physical and emotional attributes of a player. Almost anything can happen over a period of five days. There’s hope, even if a team is 0/2 facing a deficit of 311 with more than five sessions left in the game.
A five-match Test series leaves players with no place to hide. All their strengths and weaknesses are exposed as the same set of players have a go at each other week after week. It allows someone like Gill to start the tour like a run-machine, lose his bearings for a while in the middle, and still have the time to regain his mojo before it’s too late. It forces Ben Stokes to push his battered body through the pain barrier in regular long and incisive spells, after doing his bit with the bat and on the field, leading his team by example. It’s understandable when tempers fray, as was seen at Lord’s and in the final stages at Old Trafford. After having frustrated England for such a long time and tiring them out, Jadeja and Washington wanted personal milestones for celebration. That it ended up getting under the opposition’s skin was a bonus. Stokes’s reaction was churlish. When his initial offer of a draw was refused, he and his team would have done well to grit their teeth and carry on, rather than make an issue of it. At the end of five days, however, the draw in Manchester felt like a win — for India and Test cricket.
